KUALA LUMPUR, Sept 7 — The three-month suspension of The Edge Weekly and The Edge Financial Daily was illegal as it did not follow procedures laid out under the Printing Presses and Publications Act (PPPA) 1984, the High Court was told today.

Lawyer Darryl Goon, who represented The Edge Communications Sdn Bhd — the publisher of both newspapers — argued that an undesirable publication can only be prohibited by order of the minister published in a gazette.

“This was not done so in this case, therefore, the suspension is illegal because there was no breach of Section 7(1),” he was quoted as saying by news portal The Malaysian Insider when making his submissions.

Goon added that the decision to suspend the two newspapers also went against the Federal Constitution, which states that restrictions to freedom of speech and expression can only be imposed if it threatens the security of the federation, friendly relations with other countries and public order and morality, and to protect the privileges of Parliament.

“None of the grounds given by the minister come within the ambit of these permissible restrictions,” he said.

On July 24, The Edge Media Group announced its plan to challenge the suspension order issued by the Home Ministry, after they were slapped with the suspension earlier the same day.

The suspension order came three weeks after Home Minister Datuk Seri Ahmad Zahid Hamidi announced on July 1 that a show-cause letter had been issued to The Edge for publishing what the government deemed to be unverified news on debt-laden 1MDB.

From then, rumours started spreading that The Edge would be suspended, with parallels drawn with the government action against another newspaper, The Star back in 1987.

The business paper is under investigation for its previous articles on the scandal which claimed that the US$1.83 billion (RM6.96 billion) that state-owned 1MDB had invested in Middle Eastern oil company PetroSaudi International (PSI) between 2009 and 2011 was a scheme to defraud Malaysia that involved Low.

Global attention has also turned onto the investment company fully-owned by the Ministry of Finance after US-based daily The Wall Street Journal exposed a money trail linking cash deposits from 1MDB into bank accounts purportedly owned by Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak.

High Court Judge Datuk Asmabi Mohamad reserved judgement for this coming September 21.